Vibration, noise, electric power and aerodynamic design compromises are primary barriers to further improvements in the effectiveness of the hybrid or all electric automobile. Although today's automobiles are equipped with an extended range of actuators, sensors and software for controlling all the vehicle dynamics, it is still a difficult problem for the suspension system to solve simultaneously holding the body of the car in comfort and the execution of the requirements of other safety systems like ABS, ESP, steer-by-wire, etc systems.
Passive suspension systems do not provide dynamic solutions for a sometimes highly loaded dynamic environment such as car suspension. The control suspension units in the known suspension systems are very complicated and expensive, and in many ways just do not act fast enough. Even more and more research of the world works on different controllable shock absorbers, which are pneumatic, hydraulic, rheologic and electronic systems, but they all fall short in the future development of active suspensions which are demanded for higher and higher performance vehicles in reach now of the average consumer.
With the known suspension arts, today's vehicles shock-energy is converted into heat by a hydraulic shock absorber having a reacting force that is not controllable. Furthermore, the reacting force depends on the direction the piston motion, as well as the speed of displacement. Classical hydraulic shock absorbers can operate on a predefined characteristic, which is unfortunately a compromise between the safety (big reaction force) and the comfort (low reaction force) ability of the vehicle.
Accordingly, a need exists for a semi-active or fully active suspensions in automotive vehicles, particularly very high performance vehicles which are designed to run at very high ground velocities, near the top end of the supercar performance range.
In addition, greater power generation in hybrid electrical vehicles and improved fuel efficiency present continuous challenges to designers of such vehicles using currently known technologies. Accordingly, a need exists for a the hybrid electrical vehicle which is capable of generating electrical power and has improved fuel efficiency while achieving improved performance characteristics over today's current vehicles.